Let the character of the site direct the design: whether the ground should be raised or lowered, a view opened or closed, water led or stilled. Prefer variety, surprise and concealed bounds to symmetry.
Rules · Site · Plans · Optics · Walls
The ha-ha: a boundary that cannot be seen
In place of a wall, bound the garden with a ditch whose side towards the garden is a vertical retaining wall and whose other side slopes up to the field, so that cattle are kept out and the view from the house runs on uninterrupted into the park.
ditch c. 1.5–2 m deep: wall on the garden side, turf slope on the park side
The sunk fence was French in origin: Dézallier d’Argenville describes openings at the ends of walks closed by a ditch, which he calls ah! ah! after the surprise of the walker who comes upon it, and John James’s translation of 1712 brought the term into English. Walpole credits Charles Bridgeman with using it to bound whole gardens, at Stowe in the 1720s and elsewhere, and calls it the decisive step: once the wall was gone, the garden could be joined to the country beyond, and the country itself could be improved and made part of the view.
Seen from the house, the ha-ha is invisible: the lawn appears to run straight into the park, where cattle and deer graze as part of the scene. It remained the essential tool of the landscape park, and Brown used it everywhere.
Related rules
Compose the garden as a painter composes a landscape: in groups of trees for light and shade, with water winding through the hollows and a temple or bridge placed where it will be seen across it, so that each turn of the walk opens a new picture.
Bring grass up to the walls of the house and keep the cattle off it with a ha-ha; plant trees in clumps on the rising ground and as single specimens on the lawn; and enclose the park with a belt of woodland, with a drive inside it from which the park is seen.
Make the lake by damming a stream in its valley, give it a winding, irregular outline with promontories, and hide both its ends behind trees, a bend or a bridge, so that it seems a river flowing through the park.
Show the natural beauties of a place and hide its defects; give it an appearance of extent and freedom by disguising the boundary; conceal every interference of art, so that the whole seems natural; and remove or hide whatever serves only convenience and cannot be made ornamental.
Let the approach be the natural road to the house, without needless turns; let it show the house first at an angle, so that two sides are seen, and not head-on down an avenue; and make it plain that the road leads to this house and nowhere else.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The ha-ha: a boundary that cannot be seen”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/bridgeman-ha-ha. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.